1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an endoscope that includes an image pickup device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, endoscopes in which an image pickup device is provided have been widely used in medical and industrial fields.
To ensure favorable insertability of the endoscope into a body cavity or the like, it is desirable for an endoscope to have an insertion portion with a small diameter.
Further, an endoscope is used in which an image pickup device that is mounted in a distal end portion of the insertion portion is a small size. In order to drive the image pickup device, it is necessary to insert a cable that includes a plurality of signal wires that transmit a plurality of power supplies of different voltages, a drive signal that electrically drives the image pickup device, and an image pickup signal that is outputted from the image pickup device in accordance with application of the drive signal thereto and the like, through the inside of the insertion portion.
Various kinds of endoscopes in which the number of pixels of a solid image pickup device varies according to the purpose of the endoscopy are in practical use, and a load on the side of a processor as a signal processing apparatus that is detachably connected to the endoscope is also increasing.
Therefore, it is desirable to enable the performance of endoscopy using a common processor for which a load has been reduced also in the case of different kinds of endoscopes by, on the side of the respective endoscopes, generating a drive signal that corresponds to the image pickup device mounted in the relevant endoscope and providing a circuit substrate (also referred to as simply “substrate”) that performs pre-processing that is suited to the relevant image pickup device with respect to an image pickup signal that is outputted from the image pickup device.
When providing a substrate inside an endoscope, to ensure favorable assemblability and the like, a small-size connector that relays a cable (wiring) is also required, and when a small-size connector is used, a space between adjacent connector contact pins also decreases. Consequently, it is necessary to implement a countermeasure to deal with the occurrence of a short circuit or the like between connector contact pins.
For example, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2008-307293 as a first conventional example, as an image pickup apparatus that includes an image pickup device and a circuit substrate mounted in a distal end portion of an insertion portion, a configuration is adopted in which ground signal wire binding sections are arranged at positions that deviate from each other to facilitate the performance of work to solder a cable to the image pickup apparatus.
Further, in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2008-295589 as a second conventional example, an endoscope apparatus is disclosed that detects a variation in a voltage value of a driving power source so as to actuate a voltage detection function even in a standby state.